Download Living in and Coping with World Risk Society: The Cosmopolitan Turn

Ulrich Beck
Living in and Coping with World Risk Society:
The Cosmopolitan Turn
– Lecture in Moscow, June 2012 –
When a world-order collapses, then the analysis begins, though that doesn’t seem to
hold for the type of social thinking social theory currently prevalent. With universalist
aloofness and somnambulant certainty, it hovers above the currents of epochal
change.
Just think for a moment of the ‘cosmopolitical events’ that changed the world during
the last 25 years – 9/11, the ongoing financial crisis, the ongoing climate change, the
ongoing nuclear catastrophe in Fukushima, the ongoing Arab spring, the ongoing
euro-crisis, the ongoing Occupy-Wall-Street Movement. All of those have at least two
features in common: (1) they came and come by total surprise, which means: they
are beyond our political and sociological categories and imagination; and (2) all of
them are transnational or global in their scope and implications.
From this follows my question: Is it true that today this kind of universalist social
analysis [whether it be structuralist, interactionist, Marxist or based on critical or
system theory] is antiquated and provincial? Antiquated because it excludes what is
patent, namely, a paradigm shift in modern society and politics; provincial because it
falsely absolutizes the path-dependent scope of experience and expectation in
Western European and American modernization, thus distorting the sociological view
of its particularity?
It would be an understatement to say that European sociology and sociology in
general needs to understand the modernization of other societies for supplementary
reasons, in order to complete its world-view. It is rather the case that we Europeans
can understand ourselves only if we ‘deprovincialize’ – in other words, if we learn to

„Cosmopolitanism“ is a loaded concept, especially in the Russian context; it does not mean ‘unpatriotic
sentiment and behavior’ as Stalin defined it politically. In my theoretical and empirical perspective the
‘cosmopolitan turn’ answers to the epistemological challenge of globalization: how can we understand and
analyze the new interconnectedness of the world. To put it in a nutshell, my answer is: by looking at ourselves
through the eyes of the other – methodologically.
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see through the eyes of others as a matter of sociological method. This is what I call
the cosmopolitan turn in sociological and political theory and research.
I will develop this argument in five stages.
First, I will call into question one of the most powerful convictions about society and
politics, one which binds both social actors and social scientists: methodological
nationalism. Methodological nationalism equates modern society with society
organized in a territorially limited nation-state.
Second, what is meant by ‘cosmopolitization’? The best way to answer this question
is through a paradigmatic example: that of global transplant medicine – ‘fresh
kidneys’.
Third, what is new about world risk society?
Fourth, how does global risk – the euro-crisis – change the power landscape of
Europe?
Fifth, taking climate change as an example, how are new cosmopolitan communities
of global risk being imagined and realized?
1. Critique of methodological nationalism
Methodological nationalism assumes that the nation-state and society are the
‘natural’ social and political forms of the modern world. It assumes that humanity is
naturally divided into a limited number of nations, which on the inside, organize
themselves as nation-states, and on the outside set boundaries to distinguish
themselves from other nation-states. This dualism between the national and the
international preents the most fundamental category of political organization. Indeed,
our political and social scientific frame of reference is rooted in the concept of the
nation-state. It is the national outlook on society and politics, law, justice and history
that governs the political and sociological imagination. And it is exactly this
methodological nationalism that prevents the social sciences and humanities from
getting at the heart of the key political dynamics of the world at risk or Europe at risk.
Where social or political actors subscribe to this believe I talk of ‘national outlook’;
where it determines the perspective of the social scientific observer, I talk of
‘methodological nationalism’. The distinction between the perspective of the social
actor and that of the social scientist is crucial, because there is only a historical
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connection between the two not a logical one. This historical connection – between
social actors and social scientists – alone gives rise to the axiomatic of
methodological nationalism. And methodological nationalism is not a superficial
problem or a minor error. It involves both, the routines of date collection/production
and basic concepts of modern sociology, like society, class, state, democracy, family,
imagined community etc.
It is evident that, in the 19th century, European sociology was founded and formulated
within a nationalist paradigm and that any cosmopolitan sentiments were snuffed out
by the horrors of the great wars. In the methodological nationalism of Emile
Durkheim, fraternity becomes solidarity and national integration. He, of course, has in
mind the integration of the national society – France – without even mentioning it (but
true is also, at the same time both – Émile Durkheim and Auguste Comte – referred
to cosmopolitanism as a future possible development of modern society). Max
Weber’s sociology involved a comparative study of economic ethics and world
religions, but the political inspiration for his sociology is the national and the nationstate.
The critique of methodological nationalism should not be confused with the thesis
that the end of the nation-state has arrived. Nation-states (as all the research shows)
will continue to thrive or will be transformed into transnational states (for example,
European Union). The decisive point is that national organization as a structuring
principle of societal and political action can no longer serve as the orienting reference
point for the social scientific observer. One cannot even understand the renationalization or re-ethnification trend in Western or Eastern Europe and other parts
of the world without a cosmopolitan perspective. In this sense, the social sciences
can only respond adequately to the challenge of globalization if they manage to
overcome methodological nationalism and to raise empirically and theoretically
fundamental questions within specialized fields of research, and thereby elaborate
the foundations of a newly formulated cosmopolitan social science.
In order to overcome methodological nationalism we need a cosmopolitan turn, a
cosmopolitan perspective.
2. What is meant by ‘cosmopolitization’?
We are living in an era not of cosmopolitanism but of cosmopolitization: the ‘global
other’ is in our midst. The concept of cosmopolitization is surrounded by
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misunderstandings and misinterpretations. The best way to make it comprehensible
is through a paradigmatic example: that of global transplant medicine. The victory of
global transplant surgery (and not its crises!) has swept away its own ethical
foundations and paved the way for a shadow economy that supplies the world market
with ‘fresh’ organs. In a radically unequal world there is clearly no shortage of
desperate individuals prepared to sell a kidney, a section of their liver, a lung, an eye,
and even a testicle for a pittance. The fate of desperate patients waiting for organs
have become obscurely embroiled with the fate of no less desperate people, as each
group struggles to find a solution to basic problems of survival. Thus arises what I call
a real-existing cosmopolitization of emergency.
This impure, banal, coercive cosmopolitization of ‘fresh kidneys’ bridged the either/or
between North and South, core and periphery, haves and have-nots. In the
individualized bodyscapes continents, races, classes, nations and religions all
become fused. Muslim kidneys purify Christian blood. White races breathe with the
aid of a black lung. The blond manager gazes out at the world through the eyes of an
African street urchin. A Catholic priest survives thanks to the liver carved from a
prostitute living in a Brazilian favella. The bodies of the rich become patchwork rugs.
Poor people, in contrast, are becoming actual or potential one-eyed or one-kidneyed
depositories of square parts. The piecemeal sale of their organs is their lifeinsurance. At the other end of the line evolves the bio-political ‘world citizen’ – a
white, male body, fit or fat, with an Indian kidney or Muslim eye.
This example illustrates what I mean by ‘cosmopolitization’: The global poor is not
just besides us, the global poor is in us – and for that reason alone no longer a
‘global other’.
The facts of cosmopolitization are certainly concern of the social sciences, and
therefore it is important to clearly distinguish between philosophical cosmopolitanism,
which is about norms, and sociological cosmopolitization, which is about facts.
Cosmopolitanism, in the philosophical sense of Immanuel Kant and Jürgen
Habermas, means something active, a task, a conscious decision, one that is clearly
a responsibility of elites and implemented from above. Today, on the other hand, a
banal and impure cosmopolitization is unfolding, involuntary, unnoticed, powerfully
and aggressively below the surface, behind the façades of existing national spaces,
sovereign territories, and etiquettes; from the top of society down to everyday life of
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families, in work situations, individual careers and bodies although national flags are
still waved and national attitudes, identities and forms of consciousness are even
growing stronger.
3. This is exactly the case in the context of world risk society
Why is the concept of ‘world risk society’ so important in order to understand the
social and political dynamics and transformations at the beginning of the 21st
century? It is the accumulation of risk – nuclear, ecological, financial, military,
terrorist, biochemical and informational – that has an overwhelming presence in our
world today. To the extent that risk is experienced as omnipresent, there are only
three possible reactions: denial, apathy and transformation. Denial is largely
inscribed into first modern culture, but ignores the political risk of denial; this is
evident, for example, in the case of nuclear energy after Fukushima. Apathy gives
way to a nihilistic strain in postmodernism. Transformation marks the issue the
concept world risk society raises: how does the anticipation of a multiplicity of manmade futures and its risky consequences effect and transform the perceptions, living
conditions and institutions of modern societies? One of these striking examples is, of
course, the global financial crisis and the turmoil it creates in Europe and the world
over.
First we have to distinguish between risk and catastrophe. Risk does not mean
catastrophe. Risk means the anticipation of catastrophe. Risks are about staging the
future in the present, whereas the future of future catastrophes is in principle
unknown. Without techniques of visualization, without symbolic forms, without mass
media, risks are nothing at all. So global risks actually are globally medialized risks.
The sociological and political point is: If destruction and disaster are anticipated this
produces a compulsion to act. The anticipation of threatening future catastrophes in
the present (and the euro-crisis as again a living example) creates all kind
turbulences inside national and international institutions but also in everyday life.
Politically speaking, global risks create global public which mobilize people beyond all
kind of borders, national, religious, ethnical etc. borders.
What is new about world risk society? Modern societies and their foundations are
shaken by the global anticipation of global catastrophes (climate change, financial
crisis). Such perceptions of globalized manufactured risks and uncertainties are
characterized by four features:
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• De-localization: Their causes and consequences are not limited to one geographical
location or space, but are in principle omnipresent.
• Incalculableness: Their consequences are in principle incalculable; at bottom it is a
matter of ‘hypothetical’ or ‘virtual’ risks which, not least, are based on scientifically
induced non-knowing and normative dissent.
• Non-compensability: The security dream of 19th century European modernity was
based on the scientific utopia of making the unsafe consequences and dangers of
decision ever more controllable; accidents could occur as long and because they
were considered compensable. If the climate has changed irreversibly, if progress in
human genetics makes irreversible interventions in human existence possible, if the
‘Super-Gau’ is happening – then it is too late. Given the new quality of threats to
humanity, the logic of compensation breaks down and is replaced by the principle
‘precaution by prevention’ (François Ewald).
4. How does global risk – the euro-crisis – change the power landscape of
Europe?
The common understanding of ‘more Europe’ is definitely caught by methodological
nationalism. This national gaze sees two ways and two ways only of reading
contemporary European politics and integration. It sees it either as federation,
leading to a federal super-state, or as intergovernmentalism, leading to a federation
of states. Both models are empirically inadequate. They fail to grasp essential things
both about present-day Europe and about the nations that make it up. But they are
also, in a deep-structural sense, anti-European. They deny the goal most worth
attaining: a Europe of diversity, a cosmopolitan Europe that helps diversity to flourish.
This is obvious when it comes to the idea of a federation of states that are seen as
defending their sovereignty against the expansion of European power. From that
perspective, European integration is a kind of European self-colonization. But it’s just
as true in the conception of a federal super-state. That is how Europe looks when it is
filtered through the exclusive categories of national thought, which can only
understand it in one way: as a huge (ethno-cultural) nation-state. This makes no
sense, as its opponents point out. One European nation is improbable, unwanted and
un-European. It never occurs to them that perhaps Europe isn’t properly conceived of
as a nation-state, as a nation-state writ large!
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Both the federation of states and the federal super-state describe the same zero-sum
game from different angles. Either there is one single state of Europe (federalism), in
which case there are no national member states anymore; or else the national
member states remain Europe’s rulers, in which case there is no Europe (intergovernmentalism). Within this framework of thought, whatever Europe gains, the
individual nations lose. And this is true whether one is for a given option or against it.
This is what it means to say that national categories of thought make the thought of
Europe impossible. Caught up in the false alternatives of the national outlook, we are
giving the choice between no Europe – or no Europe! And this seems exactly to be
the situation Europe is in now. The same two sides of one dead-end are as
prominent as they have ever been in the current euro-crisis.
Methodological nationalism denies this empirical reality of Europe, which is
cosmopolitanized. Let me give you a simple metaphor for this: Europe is like
scrambled eggs. If you try to separate the yellow from the white you will fail!
When the euro fails, then the European Union fails too (Angela Merkel and Nicolas
Sarkozy). This anticipation of the European catastrophe has changed fundamentally
the European landscape of power.
This is what the new power landscape of Europe looks like: The grammar of power
conforms to the imperial difference between creditor and debtor countries. Thus it is
not a military but an economic logic. (In this respect the talk of the ‘Fourth Reich’ is
wide of the mark.) Its ideological foundation is what I am calling German euronationalism, that is, an extended European version of Deutschmark nationalism. In
this way the German culture of stability is being elevated to the guiding idea for
Europe.
The consequences are the splitting off the EU. This is reflected, first, in the new
internal conflict between the euro-countries and the EU-countries outside the euro
zone. Those who do not have the euro find themselves excluded from the decisionmaking processes which are shaping the present and future of Europe. They find
themselves degraded to onlookers and are losing their political voice. This is most
apparent in the case of Great Britain which is sliding into European irrelevance.
However, a dramatic split is also occurring in the new, crisis-torn centre of activity of
the euro-countries, a split between the countries which already or will soon depend
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on the drip feed of the rescue fund and the countries which are financing the rescue
fund. The former have no other option but to submit to the claim to power of German
euro-nationalism. Italy, perhaps one of the most European countries, is threatened
with playing no further role in shaping the present and future of the continent.
Here you have an example how the anticipation of the European catastrophe, how
risk is changing the European landscape of power. My point is not just that the euro
risk is tearing Europe apart. That is no doubt true. But the crux of the matter is that in
the process the basic rules of European democracy are being suspended or are even
being inverted into their opposite, bypassing parliaments, governments and EU
institutions. Multilateralism is turning into unilateralism, reciprocity into hegemony,
sovereignty into the deprivation of sovereignty and recognition into disrespect for the
dignity of other nations. Even France, which long dominated European unification,
must submit to Berlin’s strictures now that it must fear for its international credit
rating.
At the same time the euro risk is opening up new possibilities, new spaces for action,
new political options, code words are: “bank union”, “financial transaction tax”, eurobonds”; “European financial government”, directly elected “president of the EU” etc.
In fact, the question of how this enormous space comprising 27 member states
should be governed if, before every decision, 27 heads of government, cabinets and
parliaments have to be convinced, has answered itself, as it were. In contrast to the
old EU, the euro zone is de facto a community of two speeds. In future only the euro
zone – not the EU – will belong to the avant-garde of Europeanization. This could
represent an opportunity for the urgently needed institutional imagination.
Let me pick up another example how the anticipation of catastrophe is changing the
world: climate change. Climate change alters society in fundamental ways, by
entailing new forms of power, inequality and insecurity – as well as new forms of
cooperation and solidarity – on local, national and global scales. Therefore my
question is:
5. Are there and how are new ‘cosmopolitan communities of risk’ being
imagined and realized?
The key concept of cosmopolitan risk communities is extended from the work of
Benedict Anderson (1983) on the rise of nation-states as ‘imagined communities’. As
Anderson showed, nationalism is formed not through the face-to-face encounters as
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much as the conscious awareness that one is living through and affected by similar
experiences and events with distant others. Anderson coined the term ‘imagined
communities’ to refer to how national identity is constructed. My ambition is to extend
this concept and address the following question: how can we turn the concept of
‘imagined cosmopolitan risk communities’ (Beck 2011) into a strong explanatory tool
for the entangled social, economic and political consequences of climate change? To
unpack this question, three points must be made:
(1) The dynamics of climate change are Janus-faced: with climate change, the very
notion of ‘community’ is no longer solely based on shared values. Rather, new global
interconnections are established via causal interpretations of
threats and
responsibilities, which create a space for pragmatic accountabilities. This new
cosmopolitan space, which transforms rather than replaces local and national
communities, depends heavily on the power of causal definitions; and it is open to
negotiation. ‘Climate skepticism’ illustrates a degree of ambivalence within the natural
sciences. Even when a working consensus on the anthropogenic nature of climate
change has attained world-wide credibility (Oreskes 2004), a total agreement is
unlikely across social and geographical distances. Dynamics of cooperation and
conflict continue to intermingle.
(2) Remapping political power and social inequality of changing climates: climate
change transforms short and long term social inequalities and political antagonisms
at local, national, regional and global levels. The emergence of new cosmopolitan
communities of risk are essentially shaped by power and resource distribution, social
and natural vulnerabilities, and rich and poor regions’ perceptions of injustice. 
(3) Intensified international cooperation becomes the stark realism of a cosmopolitan
imperative: this, finally, raises the question: how can global risks be successfully
dealt with under the conditions of multiple competing modernities with their different
normative models, material interests and political power constellations? The key to
answering this question is provided by the concept of cosmopolitical realpolitik. In
order to understand and develop this concept it has to be distinguished in particular
from normative-philosophical cosmopolitanism on the one hand, and idealistic
utopian cosmopolitanism (Archibugi 2008; Held 2004) on the other. Cosmopolitical

This can be studied by the interconnectedness of global cities in climate politics (as I and my team
do).
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realpolitik does not appeal (at least not primarily) to shared ideas and identities, but
to power and interests to be brought into play. If we adopt such a ‘realist’ perspective,
the crucial question is how the hegemonic ‘meta-power games’ of global domestic
politics (Beck 2005; 2012) can be shaped and interests pursued in such a way that
they serve the realization of common cosmopolitan goals? In short (following
Mandeville 1989 [1714]), how can private vices be transformed into public,
cosmopolitan virtues?
The concept of cosmopolitical realpolitik, which aims at answering this question, is
based on the following assumptions. The new historical reality of world risk society is
that no nation can master its problems alone. Cosmopolitanism, thus understood,
calls for neither the sacrifice of one's own interests, nor an exclusive bias towards
higher ideas and ideals. On the contrary, it accepts that for the most part political
action is interest-based. But it insists on an approach to the pursuit of one's own
interests that is compatible with those of a larger community. Thus cosmopolitical
realism basically means the recognition of the legitimate interests of others and their
inclusion in the calculation of one's own interests. In this process, interests become
‘reflexive national interests’ through repeated joint strategies of self-limitation; more
precisely, empowerment arises from self-limitation. Ideally, individual and collective
goals, both national and global, can be achieved simultaneously. In reality, however,
there are often limits and dilemmas of cosmopolitan realpolitik (Beck and Grande
2007: chapter 8). It is no panacea for all the world’s problems and it by no means
always works. In particular, whether a problem has a cosmopolitan solution depends
on the normative and institutional framework in which decisions have to be taken.
Nevertheless, the basic message of cosmopolitan realpolitik is this: the future is
open. It depends on decisions we make.
Arguably for the first time in history, cosmopolitan commitments exert real world
significance not only in responding to world risk society. A ‘Hegelian’ scenario
promises the emergence of a collaborative cosmopolitan imperative: cooperate or
fail! Human rights or human catastrophe!
However, the euro-crisis suggests a possible sinister alternative, or the ‘Carl Schmitt’
scenario: ‘normalizing the state of emergency’ (Holzinger et al. 2010). Yet, little is
known about how these two opposite tendencies intermingle and their social and
political consequences.
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Outlook
What do I mean by ‘cosmopolitan social sciences’?
Firstly, much of the social science literature is caught in a resilient methodological
nationalism bound up with the presupposition that the national-territorial remains the
primary container for the analysis of social, economic, political and cultural
processes. At the beginning of the 21st century, the world risk society is posing a
political and theoretical challenge to this idea that binding history and borders tightly
together is the only possible means of social and symbolic integration – and analysis!
Secondly, I reject the regular meanings of cosmopolitanism, thus separating it from
other concepts such as universalism, globalism, transnationalism, and
internationalism, for me cosmopolitization is an ideal and reality of universalism that
maintains a particular dimension, of globality that includes nationalism, and of transnationalism which does not exclude plurality of ethnicities and of cultures.
Thirdly, I propose a substantive shift: Cosmopolitization, I claim, is not the universal
antithesis of various particulars (nationalism, localism, culturalism etc.) but is rather
the synthesis of previous theories. It is the overcoming of the dualisms between
universalism and particularism, between internationalism and nationalism, between
globalization and localization. Thus cosmopolitization is much more than a political
theory, a philosophical utopia (or dystopia for others), a governance programme, a
personnel life style or mental state-of-mind. It is the reality of our times.
I turned the argument that cosmopolitanism is an unrealistic ideology on its head,
claiming that the proponents of the national are the idealistic one’s: they view reality
with obsolete national lenses and such cannot see the profound changes in reality,
which make their theory antiquated and misguided. To summarize my argument in a
pointed statement: In a world risk society nationalism is becoming the enemy of the
nation. Cosmopolitization is therefore a perspective for research, a political reality
and a normative theory. And it is the critical theory of our times, since it challenges
the most profound truths which we hold: the national truth.
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